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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24969913">Ashes of Orion</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyanWritesStuff/pseuds/RyanWritesStuff'>RyanWritesStuff</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who &amp; Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Time War (Doctor Who)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:23:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,572</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24969913</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyanWritesStuff/pseuds/RyanWritesStuff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>As the universe burns in the fires of the Last Great Time War, the war-battered renegade who once called himself the Doctor permits himself a moment of idle quiet amidst the ruins of his memories, but a curious encounter awaits him there...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ashes of Orion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I guess I still have this?? Haven't posted in I think literally years. This is actually something I wrote back when John Hurt passed on. Something of a tribute, I suppose.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In what would eventually turn out to be the closing years of the Last Great Time War, the man formerly known as the Doctor often thought back on his life.</p>
<p><br/>He tended not to do that very much as a rule, but then the rules had changed so much that they hardly mattered any longer. He broke the rules now; that was what he did. When he had died on Karn, the Doctor had not been reborn in the usual manner. He had been reforged like cold steel, folded and honed like a blacksmith would craft armour or a weapon.<br/>That was what he told himself when he found himself reminiscing, in any case.</p>
<p><br/>His self-awareness never really went away. Nine bodies in and it was still there, looming over him and preventing him from simply accepting things as they were.</p>
<p>He sighed quietly as he sat there, his hands resting on his knees, his posture stiff. A chill breeze scented with ash blew past him, his ragged scarf and heavy leather coat fluttering in the gust.<br/>The wind had never smelled like that before here, but even the calmest and most quiet parts of the universe had not been saved from the ravages of the war.</p>
<p><br/>The Daleks had come to the Eye of Orion around a century after the Doctor had begun to actively battle on the side of Gallifrey in the war. It had been one of his most treasured spots in all creation; a place of utter calm and tranquillity, the eye of the hurricane that was the universe. He had visited there oftentimes when his mind had run away with him, when his burdens became too much for him. Happier days had been spent there with his nearest and dearest, many happier days indeed.</p>
<p><br/>The pettiness of the Daleks could not be overestimated.</p>
<p><br/>The natives of the Eye had been wiped out or forcibly hauled into Dalek death camps within hours of their arrival to the planet. Forests and great fields had burned under orbital fire, wildlife had been eradicated completely, ruins had been smashed to pieces or blasted to their constituent atoms. The Doctor had estimated it had taken the Daleks only two days to render the Eye of Orion scarred beyond repair. Then they had left. They hadn’t wanted anything from it, there was no value there to them. It was a taunt, a reminder of their endless hatred for the man who had cost them so much over the centuries. Only the Daleks could destroy an entire world merely to send a message.</p>
<p><br/>This was his first visit there since its devastation. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had chosen that destination of all places, but the need for quiet had become quite overwhelming in a reality that had been all too loud as of late. The TARDIS had reached the Eye in record time; he suspected that it needed the break just as much as he did.<br/>The last time he’d come here, before this body, he’d been a younger man by far. That had been when he was still with Ace…though she hadn’t enjoyed it very much. He had needed time to think, which had meant a lot of not doing anything. Ace hadn’t found that particularly interesting.</p>
<p><br/>Dust blew on the wind as he sat in silence, looking down at the grey ground.</p>
<p><br/>He didn’t think Ace would recognise him these days, even beyond the physical change. Those few friends who had met him in different lives usually noticed the attitude no matter what he looked like. That attitude was gone now, of course. None of them would ever recognise him now. Romana had struggled with it for some time; he hadn’t seen Leela in what felt like eons…</p>
<p><br/>“This damnable war,” he muttered bitterly.</p>
<p><br/>There was no getting away from it, and he was beginning to think that coming here had been a foolish mistake. It was very typical of him, he thought, to surround himself in the literal ashes of his failure as a coping mechanism. So very typical.<br/>He rose to his feet on old, weary bones.<br/>Footsteps not his own crunched in the ash nearby.<br/>Instantly the Doctor whirled about, his hand whipping towards the battered bandolier he wore and drawing his screwdriver. The movement was one of pure instinct, honed on countless battlefields across time and space.</p>
<p><br/>“Put that thing down, old man. You’ll have someone’s eye out.”</p>
<p><br/>The figure standing there was not what the Doctor had expected. He was no Dalek; a tall, lanky man not too much younger than himself with fierce, pointed features resembling nothing so much as some predatory bird, an owl perhaps. His hair was grey and his outfit was a curious mix of fashions that were evidently from Earth; a long navy coat lined with rich red, a dark hooded sweater over a shirt, thick-soled boots and rather formal slacks. He had evidently been there for quite some time, observing the Doctor without saying a word.</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor didn’t like that.</p>
<p><br/>“Who are you? How did you get here?”</p>
<p><br/>The figure standing apart from him didn’t so much as twitch in response. He had a cold bearing about him, something vaguely aristocratic. There was something about him the Doctor instinctively didn’t like.</p>
<p><br/>“How did I get here? Hardly on purpose, I think it’s fair to say. It’s not exactly top of the universe’s tourist destinations, is it? Fantastic if you like ash and fire, not so much if you want a nice getaway.” He gestured around at the dusty ground.</p>
<p><br/>“Watch your tone,” the Doctor snapped. “This place was beautiful once.”</p>
<p><br/>“It was,” the other man replied. “But it isn’t now.”</p>
<p><br/>There was something in his voice that the Doctor found curious. It was hard to place, but it sounded almost as if he resented being here.</p>
<p><br/>“No,” the Doctor conceded. “No, it isn’t. I’ll still not have you disparage it.”</p>
<p><br/>The other man held his hands up reluctantly in an appeasing gesture.</p>
<p><br/>“I wish I could care half as much about anything as you do about a broken ball of dirt,” he said, half-jokingly. The Doctor didn’t think this was much the place nor the time for jokes. He hadn’t lowered his screwdriver yet.</p>
<p><br/>“You still haven’t answered the other question yet.”</p>
<p><br/>“Hm?”</p>
<p><br/>“Who are you?”</p>
<p><br/>“Ah. That one.”</p>
<p><br/>“Don’t be evasive,” the Doctor snapped.</p>
<p><br/>“I’m not being evasive, I’m being obtrusive for dramatic effect,” the other man said with a smirk. “You used to be quite good at that!”</p>
<p><br/>“Playing games with me is a bad idea at the best of times, and this isn’t even that. I’ve dealt with enough Dalek spies and androids at this stage to justify paranoia…though if you’re a Dalek droid, you’re a rather poor attempt at it.”</p>
<p><br/>The man’s considerable eyebrows furrowed in offence.</p>
<p><br/>“Excuse me?”</p>
<p><br/>“Well, look at you! Mismatched Earth clothes on a human body, turning up out of nowhere with that attitude? If you’re a spy then the Daleks are losing their touch.”</p>
<p><br/>“All offence taken,” the man snarled.</p>
<p><br/>“All offence intended!”</p>
<p><br/>“I don’t know if you’ve quite caught up yet, but I didn’t actually want to be here! I shouldn’t even be here, this is an unfortunate glitch in the system and nothing more than that! You accuse me of being a Dalek spy? One of their little puppets? You are paranoid,” the other figure said, his temper evidently riled.</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor triggered his screwdriver, a simple scan for any indication as to what his newly-found adversary might have been. He found himself quite surprised, therefore, when the other man raised something in his hand and countered the screwdriver’s sonic pulse with one of his own.</p>
<p><br/>A sonic screwdriver of his own.</p>
<p><br/>A penny dropping would have been the loudest sound in the world right then.</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor stared at him, aghast.</p>
<p><br/>“Surely not.”</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor, the other Doctor, rolled his eyes.</p>
<p><br/>“Took you long enough.”</p>
<p><br/>“That…can’t be,” the Doctor said, shaking his head gently from side to side. His hand holding his screwdriver fell slowly to his side. “I don’t recognise you. I’ve never worn that face.”</p>
<p><br/>“No,” the other Doctor said with resignation, as if he had known the conversation would come to this point eventually. “Not yet.”</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor wasn’t sure what to say. He found himself stymied by this. He highly doubted it was a Dalek trap now; this wasn’t their style. Perhaps it was something else, some other scheme against him. It had to be.</p>
<p><br/>“It’s not a trap,” the other figure said as if calming a child, “I promise. I know you’re looking for any way this can be a trap right now, but unfortunately no such luck. I’m not here to kill you; it wouldn’t benefit either of us very much.”</p>
<p><br/>“How can you be here?”</p>
<p><br/>“Working on it. Minor temporal feedback loop in the TARDIS, it happens around sites like this sometimes. Scars of the war occasionally revert to open wounds,” the other Doctor replied.</p>
<p><br/>“No,” the Doctor said, “that’s not what I meant.”</p>
<p><br/>“I know what you meant, I’m just making fun. You’ll rediscover the concept one day, I’m sure…”</p>
<p><br/>“There were to be no more,” the Doctor said, his certainty of that fact showing clearly through in his old, cracked voice as he spoke. “I’m the last one.”</p>
<p><br/>The other Doctor shrugged.</p>
<p><br/>“Not to spoil the ending but that goes about as well as most of your plans do. Quite ambitious of you, claiming to be the be-all end-all of me! That’s a lofty thing to do, isn’t it? Some would say arrogant.”</p>
<p><br/>“If you really were after me in my timeline, you’d know why I think that way.”</p>
<p><br/>“I do,” the other said simply. “Doesn’t mean I still have to agree with it. Impossibly, we can grow up a bit.”</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor mulled things over for a long, silent moment.</p>
<p><br/>“How old are you?”</p>
<p><br/>“What?”</p>
<p><br/>“How old?”</p>
<p><br/>The other Doctor’s cheeks tightened briefly as he whistled through his teeth, seemingly in thought.</p>
<p><br/>“Haven’t a clue, I celebrate birthdays whenever it’s convenient…and it so rarely is. A good two thousand and something, I think. Quite a bit older than you at any rate, though you’re looking a bit rough around the edges in that regard. Try shave once in a while, it does wonders.”</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor ignored his flippancy out of horror at what he’d said.</p>
<p><br/>“Two thousand years…” he said, feeling a tightness in his hearts.</p>
<p><br/>“Thereabouts. Haven’t lost my style at least,” he said with a mirthless grin.</p>
<p><br/>“…This war lasts that long?”</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor’s spirit flagged in a way it had often threatened to but never quite managed before. Imagining that the war could still be going on that long into his future, however, was a drain like he had never felt.</p>
<p><br/>The other Doctor looked as if he was about to retort, but bit his tongue. He inhaled and exhaled one long breath and rolled his eyes.</p>
<p><br/>“There are planets where the only way the local species can express emotion is by wailing at sounds that deafen everything else within a mile, or by crying for twenty-three hour stretches. I believe those planets, all things considered, are fairly miserable places to be. I also believe you’d call them a step up, they’d find you a bit of a downer.”</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor didn’t reply immediately.</p>
<p><br/>“Oh, you’re not going to remember this anyway, what the hell. Guess what? The war ends. It doesn’t last forever. At my point in time most of the universe doesn’t even remember it.”</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor blinked a couple of times and looked at him.</p>
<p><br/>“…Really?”</p>
<p><br/>The paranoia was gone now. No matter what misgivings he felt, that was something he desperately wanted to believe.</p>
<p><br/>“Yes. It ends. Hard as it may be to believe, there comes a time when the Last Great Time War really is that. The last one; a distant memory or story for those that care to tell it.”</p>
<p><br/>“The universe survives it,” the Doctor murmured.</p>
<p><br/>“The universe thrives,” the other Doctor replied. “Genuinely. I’m not just winding you up, that’d be a bit much even for me. Things get better on the other side of the veil.”</p>
<p><br/>It was as if a great weariness had been briefly lifted from the Doctor’s shoulders, burdened as they were. He knew it was temporary; the correction of his timeline when he had parted from his other self would make him forget. He didn’t mind that right then. Relief wasn’t something he had felt in quite some time.</p>
<p><br/>“I can’t imagine that.”</p>
<p><br/>“I don’t recall being so unimaginative,” the other Doctor scoffed.</p>
<p><br/>“I suppose you look back on me with nothing but hatred,” he said, staring his older self in the eyes. “The things I’ve done, the acts I’ve committed in the name of some cause I’m starting to forget about. …The things I might do in the future.”</p>
<p><br/>“For the longest time, yes,” the other said bluntly. “Hate and venom in spades. All efforts made to forget about you. The elephant in the room of life.”</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor had been readily expecting that, but it still hurt.</p>
<p><br/>“Then eventually, as I said, I grow up and I realise I’ve done you a tremendous disservice. I look back on it with…not pride, that would be absurd. Understanding. Respect. Perhaps even a sense of bitterness,” the older Doctor said, clearly choosing his words with care, “that under the circumstances you found yourself in, none of us could ever have matched up to you and what you did.”</p>
<p><br/>The other Doctor quietened for a moment, his face solemn.</p>
<p><br/>“It would have been a far more dreadful war if I’d been involved. Lot of unresolved anger bubbling below the surface, impossible as it is to tell from my cheerful veneer. You were the best of a bad lot. Brave enough to fight despite every fibre in your body screaming to the contrary, perhaps the bravest I’ve ever been. …I’m not much one for compliments so you should know this is really quite a special occasion.”</p>
<p><br/>Silence descended upon them as the Doctor found himself taken aback, silently contemplating the other figure’s words.</p>
<p><br/>“Anything else you want to know while we’re here? Quite a few things coming up you’ll probably rather missed you,” the other said casually, gesturing about himself.</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor chuckled quietly. It was an unfamiliar sound to him.</p>
<p><br/>“I think…all in all, I had probably best get going and leave you to find your way back. It won’t do any good for things, the two of us staying in proximity for so long.”</p>
<p><br/>The other Doctor nodded silently. His flippant demeanour had temporarily disappeared; the Doctor supposed he was remembering certain thoughts and emotions at this moment in his life. If anyone knew how he was feeling, well…</p>
<p><br/>The Doctor turned back to his TARDIS, so battered and beaten by the centuries of war it had endured. Beyond its doors lay the path back to battle and misery, more death and strife, and yet for a few brief instants he knew that there was something brighter ahead of him.</p>
<p><br/>“…Thank you,” he said in more of a husky whisper than aloud before he walked away.</p>
<p><br/>“No,” the other said after he was safely out of earshot, “thank you. Thank you for being the Doctor.”</p>
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